Star Brigade: Ascendant (SB4)
Page 1
Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Free Prequel Novella
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Epilogue
Books by C.C. Ekeke
Acknowledgements
Free Prequel Novella
A Note from the Author
C. C. EKEKE
Copyright © 2017 by C. C. Ekeke
STAR BRIGADE: Ascendant is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
STAR BRIGADE, characters, names and related indicia are registered trademarks of C.C. Ekeke.
Copyright © 2017 by C. C. Ekeke
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the copyright holder, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles.
Cover design: Tom Edwards
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For Brian & Dave
Thank you for teaching me not to run from fear.
Prologue
The void extended all around Habraum Nwosu, distorting every sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch.
But the worst sensation was every molecule in his body being yanked apart by this turbulent singularity. Pulled apart, molecule by molecule. Slammed back together, molecule by molecule. Ripped apart, molecule by molecule. Merged back together, molecule by molecule.
The pain sank deeper than physical, at least anything he could identify or prepare for or his frayed thoughts could process. The Cercidalean’s molecules were stretched apart, then slammed together at nauseating force. Pulled apart. Slammed together. Again and again and again.
He opened his mouth to scream. The distorted void only grew louder…angrier.
Abruptly, the ripping-and-slamming sensation ceased.
Habraum, finally whole again, landed hard on solid earth. He lay still for several moments, every inch of his six-foot-five frame in discomfort.
“Ooh,” the Cerc groaned. “Definitely felt all that.” Thank the Sacred Gemini for light armor with shock absorbers.
Once the throbbing subsided, Habraum opened his eyes. Overhead he saw a sky smeared with bruised purple and ruby. One deep breath and the Cercidalean nearly choked. The air was thick and syrupy, completely unlike the steamy condensation of Faroor’s geyser expanse. Even the taste was off, noxiously sweet and sour…oddly familiar.
He sat upright, sucked in more cautious breaths, and assessed his physical state.
Ten fingers, ten toes. He wriggled them painlessly. Achy, woozy, yet alive. His light-armored green and white field uniform with gold shoulder guards and combat boots bore dents from today’s battle but remained intact. Habraum instantly knew he was no longer on Faroor. At least any part he recognized.
Faroor. Habraum scratched at his well-trimmed goatee, thoughts landing on where he’d just been. Where he should be. With his unit: Star Brigade Combat Team 1.
“I cocked up massively,” the Cerc realized. The Star Brigade captain had leaped after Liliana Cortes when she had been sucked into a micro-singularity crafted by Ghuj’aega, their dangerous super-powered target. Yet that action had left the remainder of his combat team when they needed him most.
But Habraum had to save Cortes.
Especially after what Ghuj’aega did to Khrome—Khrome’s demise was too raw to revisit. His stomach twisted as reality doused him in white-hot anguish. Another Brigadier dead under my command.
Habraum knew the risks of Star Brigade’s perilous vocation, as did Khrome and every active Brigadier. Still, that made a fellow Brigadier’s death no less agonizing.
With considerable effort, the Cerc pushed Khrome from his thoughts to focus on locating Cortes and finding their way back to CT-1.
He took in his new surroundings, battle-honed senses drinking in every detail. The rocky terrain was coated in maroon with winding blue striations and pointedly pitch-black grassy vegetation. Yet these steep, rolling hills bizarrely jutted out in every which way, less like rock formations on Habraum’s homeworld and more like ocean waves frozen in mid-crash. The soil had a different cohesiveness on this world, he supposed. Like another world he’d visited over a year prior. And that odor…
“This place looks…and feels…so familiar,” Habraum muttered. That fluency came with a heady nostalgia, one he wasn’t enjoying. The Cerc popped up quickly, bouncing a little higher into the air.
Lower-gravity world, he realized, and adjusted his field uniform to compensate. Strange, the Cerc thought. He had experienced similar lower gravity before, and the adjustments he tapped into his wristcom were from memory. Shaking off the déjà vu, he moved toward one round hill with a towering overhead jut.
“Crescendo!” he called out. The echo sound inverted and rippled, bouncing off the surrounding hills. No response from Cortes.
He called Cortes’s codename again. Same echo effect. Same non-answer.
Habraum tapped the wristcom on his right forearm gauntlet to locate Cortes. If she wasn’t wherever that singularity had deposited him, the wristcom’s locator would reveal it. Habraum modified the query to locate Liliana, hoping against hope her com signal would appear.
No sign of Liliana Cortes within a five-mile radius. Habraum nearly swore, until the wristcom’s urgent beep demanded his attention.
He looked again at the mini-holo display floating above his wristcom, revealing several Star Brigadier signals, including Captain Sam D’Urso’s and a duplicate of his own. The display also confirmed he was no longer on Faroor, or the Herope system.
“What the bloody hazik?” Habraum triangulated the distance from his current position and scrambled up the overarching hill before him.
His mind raced, not just with Liliana’s fate and his unknown location, but also the appearance of Sam and what looked like two full Star Brigade combat
teams not half a mile away.
That’s impossible, Habraum thought to himself. Sam and her CT were still on Hollus Maddrone starbase within Zeid. That trickle of familiarity from earlier became a gush of ice-cold water down the back of the Cerc’s neck. Once he reached the top of the overarching hill, he rechecked his wristcom readings and counted the number of Star Brigade com signals.
Fourteen exactly. Then planetary data streamed in.
Habraum froze. Can’t be.
Fourteen, the number of Star Brigadiers sent to Beridaas to destroy two young skrivans.
Two of those fourteen had survived, he and Sam D’Urso, after an ambush by different adversaries.
“Meaning—” Habraum didn’t finish the sentence, or else he’d choke on the words like he had on the syrupy air. Meaning somehow, someway, he was back on Beridaas during one of the worst days in his life.
The Cerc looked ahead. Between a forest of coiling trees and smooth-edged rock formations covered in black pelted grass, Habraum saw the battle and almost choked on that syrupy atmosphere again.
From afar, it was a furious cloud of dust and flashes from weapons and energy blasts, like he remembered.
From above, the heavens burned deep crimson, like he remembered.
The Cerc felt disembodied at seeing flashing beams of solidified biokinetic force—his own energy signature—lancing through the clouds.
This can’t be happening.
Habraum’s mind was a raging storm. Without thinking, he hauled himself over the hill’s crest and skidded down the bowed-in slope.
Was this the same nightmare he had relived in slumber for over a year? Habraum hoped those had stopped a few months ago. Was he just unconscious somewhere in that singularity?
But everything around him felt, tasted, and looked real.
Habraum pushed his long legs faster toward the storm of billowing maroon dust and chaos. The screams spilling out were just as familiar and awful as he remembered. The confusion from the ambush on two Star Brigade CTs rang out crystal clear.
How is this happening?
Had the Sacred Twins given Habraum a second chance to save his teammates from the grisly fate awaiting them?
Habraum stopped questioning and ran faster. With both fists glowing crimson, he was primed for whatever threat occupied these dense billows.
Habraum burst through the veil. After a moment of sound, fury, and blinding lights, he almost collided into a tower of writhing cybernetic cables and filaments. It took several nanoclics for Habraum’s brain to process this encounter
He looked up and kept craning his head back at one of several gigantic cybernetic creatures, multiple golden and silvery spidery limbs with streaming oily black cables writhing around its head. The other creatures, almost thirty from Habraum’s count, resembled this creature. But through chaos each looked somewhat indistinct.
Habraum’s jaw dropped. All this time he never could accurately recall the race of their mysterious attackers. “Shadowy demons” had been his and Sam’s label for them.
Now, with over thirty of them tearing through his and Jovian Ivers’s battle-hardened Star Brigade combat teams like woodpaper, Habraum saw their true forms.
“Cybernarr,” he uttered immediately. A different type than Marguliese, but still Cybernarr.
Several meters away was a fiery comet scorching a trail high through the air, unloading jets of gold flame on the attackers to little effect.
Sam. Habraum’s heart drummed against his chest. Standing below Sam was a bald and bearded Cerc in similar but slightly different armor.
The Cerc gaped at his younger self firing off pure beams of concussive biokinetic force, slicing through several of these Cybernarr. He remembered the noxious cocktail of confusion and terror flooding his veins at that moment. The Cerc recalled the commands he shouted to his scattered and disoriented combat team, only to watch them get slaughtered by these implacable Cybernarr.
Now Habraum saw the full scope of devastation that had dismantled the two combat teams, long-dead teammates cut down yet again…
Hihlurkrys Nurmij, aka Sever, ringed by countless Cybernarr, their long, oily black talons shredding his wiry body apart, spilling out entrails.
“Not again,” he groaned. With Marguliese’s training, he had been honing his abilities to engage Cybernarr. Habraum sprinted for the nearest target, firing with two opened fists. Pure beams of bright crimson from all ten fingers impaled the colossal Cybernarr creature from behind. It jerked upright and swiveled its head around without turning its body. Its face was a patchwork of cybernetic filaments and shifting circuitry. Three balefully glowing yellow eyes zeroed in on Habraum. His breath hiked. That prompted him to up the intensity of his biokinetic blasts, expanding the relentless force pouring from his fingers. For Cortes. For all these Brigadiers. Soon, the concussive energy flooded every iota of the Cybernarr’s innards. Habraum violently swung both arms outward.
And the Cybernarr creature blew apart in a confetti shower of shattered cybernetics, its head with its filaments dropping fast. Habraum snapped off a short, concussive burst to explode the head into dust motes—a most pertinent part of killing a Cybernarr.
The Cerc knelt down beside the Brigadier he had rescued. And his world stopped.
Captain Jovian Ivers aka Blitzkrieg lay prone and clutching his throat as dark blood pooled around his body. His dark, wavy hair was unruly, uniform shredded from the torso up, yellow visor cracked and shattered around his blocky features. Ivers’s thick beard was soaked, blood squirting from his neck and chest.
One glimpse at Habraum and the fear in Jovian’s eyes retreated considerably. The Cerc’s own eyes now blurred with unshed tears. He remembered their last conversation before this disastrous mission, every word charged with animosity.
Any hatred had vanished long ago for Habraum. Seeing this flawed but decent man alive, a brother in arms, filled him with joy no words could describe. Thinking of the family Ivers had left behind made Habraum’s heart ache.
Ivers tried speaking. A strained gurgle came out.
Habraum held a hand to his lips. “Save your strength, Jove,” he spoke in choked-up tones, then scanned around them. More Brigadiers fell to this Cybernarr onslaught. History was repeating all around in this cloud of death and flashing light. The combat teams were overwhelmed, screaming, dying, exactly like Habraum remembered.
Deida Jylhur-Goljeim, aka Tomcat, from his previous CT. She lay face down on torn-up soil, riddled with smoking blast holes.
Callisto Bailey Scott, aka Minerva, pinned down, a Cybernarr twisting her head until the neck cracked and ripped from the shoulders in fountains of blood.
Shivers seized Habraum. He kept moving.
Through the smear of putrid haze, the Cerc watched his younger self go flying. He recalled the attack like yesterday. The blade that sliced through armor and flesh like cake. The blistering energy beams that lanced into him, knocking Habraum down and out, barely blunted by his armor yet still nearly cooking his insides. Seeing the aftermath was jarring.
The fiery comet that was Sam scorched toward the Cybernarr attacking younger Habraum. She watched his back as usual, just like he watched hers. Seeing this, the Cerc’s heart warmed fleetingly.
But Habraum knew more death would follow. He had relived this day too many times not to.
Star Brigade corpses lay everywhere.
Phnu Koellescha, aka Bravo, the tentacles from his shredded lower body strewn across the battlefield in wriggling pieces.
Ariel Ramos, aka Ursa Major, on her side, desperately stuffing bowels back into her ripped-open belly.
And Cortes? The poor doctor was lost somewhere on Beridaas with no idea of this threat.
“I’m saving you, lad,” Habraum promised Ivers, who reached frantically for him. “I’ll be back.” The Cerc lurched upright and sprinted toward the thickest combat.
Other towering Cybernarr creatures turned in his direction. They were aware of him now, eradicating the elemen
t of surprise. One creature bolted in his direction on spidery legs and extended lashing wiry filaments. The Cerc dodged and ducked with practiced agility. More Cybernarr creatures advanced. In the background he saw Sam’s flames wink out just before she plummeted limply.
She’ll survive, he reminded himself. Clasping both glowing fists together, Habraum then swung like a sledgehammer. His thick, bright, crimson beam sheered straight through his adversary. He held his beam steady in the Cybernarr’s midsection until his energy filled every bit of its insides and blasted apart.
I’ll save them and Liliana. Habraum dashed ahead. He saw a towering Suuruali ringed by Cybernarr, clawing his way to the crest of that hill. Dr. Pel Makenokom, aka Thanatos.
The massive Suuruali, an over-seven-foot mix of ursine and reptilian ferocity, roared while tossing his attackers off. He moved like a hurricane, lashing out with arms the size of small tree trunks.
Pel’s field uniform was torn half off. Frothy white blood oozed from dozens of grisly gashes across his brownish-green fur. His arms began glowing like yellow sunlight…meaning Pel was about to eject that radiant energy and destroy their attackers.
The courageous Suuruali was about to save Habraum and Sam’s lives at the cost of his own.
The Cerc shook his head. Not this time. “You and the rest still alive won’t die today,” he whispered.
Pel’s dark, beady eyes landed on Habraum. The Suuruali turned to the younger Habraum sprawled several yards away, then back to the older, uninjured Cerc.
Recognition flooded his heavy ursine features. Two writhing, coiled Cybernarr approached behind Pel. Habraum raised his glowing fists to fire. But the Suuruali, already sensing them, whirled about and swiped both aside using that ungodly strength of his. He turned back to Habraum and held up a hand, shaking his big, shaggy head.
Habraum gaped in horror. Why not?! The Cerc gritted his teeth as another wave of these insect-like Cybernarr scuttled toward the remainder of the two CTs. Quite a few crawled toward Habraum.
The Cerc moved to charge ahead and destroy as many as possible…
…until something behind Habraum grabbed his shoulder, holding him fast.
His heart sank. “Rogguts!” His chance had been lost.